Rachel Maddow is awesome! I know of very few people who can rip a stupid argument to pieces, while keeping the content OK for national television. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert come to mind as two others.
Here she is, taking on George Rekers, a member of that uniquely American Christian Right bunch of hypocrites, the gay-but-ashamed-of-it-and-will-do-anything-to-interfere-in-others’-lives club.
A girl in Gujarat is being told she has to carry her rape-baby to term. The ‘girl’ is not a mistake. She is 13. Yes, 13. The Judge of the Sessions court in Gujarat has demonstrated that it is indeed possible to remove all traces of sensibility, of compassion and basic human decency from the practice of jurisprudence.
At an age when most kids have just reached puberty, this poor girl has to go through the horror of being raped, and then have the misfortune of not only being refused a perfectly normal medical procedure by her wretched doctor, but also of running into this utter imbecile of a judge. I mean, I understand that abortion is an emotional issue with a lot of people; but really, in a country where female infanticide is rampant and women are traded for money, this girl has to carry her rape-baby to term so as to preserve the sanctity of life? As if that weren’t enough, the prick of a judge has the nerve to comment that he sees no danger to the health of the mother in making her carry her pregnancy to term. I’d like to see the fucking git of a human being get butt-raped; and then be forced to watch a tape of the assault on him every day for the rest of his life. And when he’s done that for two decades, if he still thinks that the mother’s health isn’t adversely affected by having to re-live the horror of being raped every day of her life, his opinion might be taken as something more than the stench from a pile of shit.
For all our faults, I would never have thought judges in this country would put ideological bullshit ahead of the suffering of people, to say nothing of children. Thank you, Your Honour, you miserable, despicable sack of shit, for proving me wrong. Thank you, milord, you disgrace to the human race, for preserving the ever so sacred sanctity of life.
The kid is 13, for crying out loud.
I complained recently that the office of alumni affairs at IITM put a poster of four white people in an ad for a patent recognition award. I have since been told, by people whose opinions I have regard for, that I am reading too much into the matter, and that I’m only being argumentative. While the latter is something I would almost readily stipulate to, I do think that the matter is serious enough to merit discussion. The only rebuttal I heard that had any teeth (“Maybe you should be looking to get a patent, rather than at the picture in the poster”) only had teeth because it was ad-hominem!
Consider what the poster would’ve meant if the picture had been that of four people in turbans, or four people wearing ash or vermillion across their foreheads, or threads down their shoulders. A picture on the ad for and award can reasonably be assumed to be of the average recipient of the award. A poster for an award that has a picture of one sub-section of the population, in effect, says that most awardees should be expected to be from that sub-section. I do see something wrong with that suggestion, however statistically verifiable or otherwise it may be. So, when I see a poster for an award at IITM with four Caucasians on it, I find myself asking, ‘‘The Big Bang Theory’ is about four people from Caltech, and they have an Indian amongst them. Surely a poster at IITM can do better than none?’
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In a related, but somewhat different matter, Q) Did you hear what happened to the coordinators who were dishonourably discharged from their posts?
A) Nothing. They’ve since, apparently, been reinstated. The narrative, it seems to me, is the following: people act stupidly; act of stupidity is recognized; the people are punished and vague overtures are made towards increased monitoring of the medium in question; the people are forgiven, and go scot-free (I see nothing wrong with this last one – People deserve second chances; maybe even third or fourth chances).
The root of the problem, of course, never figured in the narrative. Does anybody else see a recipe for the same damn mistakes to happen over and over again?
The people of Kashmir and large parts of the north-east have for decades been subject to the rule of a power they consider alien. That this power should be the government of India is particularly disheartening – the people of India know what it means to have no freedom in their own homes and backyards; at least, one would think that we should.
Why should the Kashmiri people forgo their right to self-determination? Is it because they happen to be stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the time? Is it because we are only protecting them from what we know to be a threat to them (but they don’t)? Didn’t the missionaries who wanted to civilize us heathen have a similar reasoning? Or is it perhaps because the politicians on either side of the Kashmiris are jerks who cannot keep their dicks in their pants? (I mean no offence to the women on either side intent on screwing the Kashmiri people over, of course; the dicks referred to are only proverbial. Even otherwise, evidence seems to suggest that they would be too small to matter, or politicians in India and Pakistan would be using them, instead of their mouths).
The politicians of 21st century India who rail against the colonial attitude of the west and the ‘moral and cultural depravity of the west’ are also the same politicians who adopt the ”Kashmir is an integral part of India, and anybody who says otherwise is an enemy of the state” line. One would have hoped for a few sensible people in India’s parliament of 543 who would voice a more reasoned, reasonable argument, but one learns to live with disappointment in a country like India. A country where we seem to have made peace with the idea that democracy is the rule of the few powerful over the vast majority of the powerless, with the only choice in the matter being whether the people choose the devil or the deep blue sea.
Among the more abominable gifts of the people of power in India to the Indian polity is the alienation of large sections of the aboriginal people of the subcontinent, the adivasis, from their right to liberty, their right to the land of their forefathers, their right to life. When these people do manage to raise their starved voices, they are branded Maoists or Naxalites, locked up, without legal recourse, for years on end thanks to the draconian AFSP Act. Forget illegal searches and seizures; forget probable cause and the assumption of good faith; the act allows police and army officers to basically shoot at whim – officers of the state can shoot people they ‘suspect’ of being naxalites first, and not be asked too many questions later. Which is all right, I guess, because law-enforcement in this country has a stellar record of respecting human rights and civil liberties. Or Not. There is a reason the average Indian mistrusts the police and would do almost anything before they have to visit a police station.
Why do the adivasis have to give up their land for the sake of progress which gets measured by how much money the richest man in India has, rather than by how many millions of India’s poor die of starvation? Or lack the most basic facilities of sanitation? Or lack education and employment? Why should the people of Singur give up their land so that Tata can build a factory and make a fortune? A fortune, it must be noted, no part of which would go to the displaced people themselves. Why do the people of the Narmada valley be displaced from their lands, and have their fields submerged, so that the people of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar can have water at the turn of a tap? Why should the adivasis of Orissa or Chattisgarh let themselves be forced off their forests which have sheltered them, which they have sheltered? Why should they give up their hills, the gods that they worship so that Vedanta can mine the hills down to the ground? Why?
And, when all these things are done without their voices being heard, how do we blame them if they take up arms?
Learning to be Terse 